The lifting of the Israeli air, land and sea
blockade over Lebanon will certainly please and calm the Lebanese
people who, alone, had to pay the price for the fundamentalist
Hezbollah’s monopoly over the decision to launch a futile war
against Israel on behalf of Iran and Syria. The Lebanese people
alone will, for years to come, bear the consequences of this
destructive and inane war that turned the clock back 20 years on the
Land of the Cedars and forced a quarter of a million Lebanese to
leave their country for greener pastures.

Neither the Lebanese people nor their
government had any say in the start of the war or its end. They had
no say in the blockade or in its lifting, nor did they have a say in
the drafting of UN resolution 1701 according to which the fighting
stopped. This resolution which, unfortunately, was not passed under
Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, did not fulfill the dire need for
imposing a complete and lasting peace.

It is true that the war has stopped and the
blockade has been lifted, and it is true that the Lebanese Army has
deployed in the South and along the borders with Israel with the
support of the Blue Helmets. But it is even more true that all the
root causes of the war and the blockade – namely the anarchy of the
status quo of freely operating militias, their weapons and their
mini-states, the porous borders with Syria, and the Jihadi culture
of hatred and rejection of others – all remain extant, and in some
cases have become more exacerbated.

The dangerous and worrisome in all that has
happened is that Hezbollah remains stubbornly insistent on not
surrendering its weapons under any circumstance, and Hassan
Nasrallah has concocted yet another Jihadi mission for those weapons,
which is that of “defending” Lebanon. Which means that the weapons
have become, until further notice, preventive and not offensive. The
Hezbollah Members of Parliament have officially confirmed that there
is a binding understanding between the Siniora government and
Hezbollah that the Lebanese Army will not interfere with the weapons
of the party as long as these weapons remain hidden, inconspicuous
and stored at sites known only to the Party’s leaders, and over
which the State has no oversight or authority.

Therefore, the joy at the lifting of the
blockade, like the joy at the truce and the cessation of hostilities,
remains truncated. This joy can, at any moment, turn into sorrow,
crying and teeth gnashing because all the causes of the war remain
in place, particularly since the issue of Hezbollah’s security and
military presence inside Beirut Airport, at the ports and border
crossings of Lebanon has not been dealt with.

The strong State which Hassan Nasrallah is
calling for with mere words, since in reality he is dedicated to
weakening and dominating it, cannot rise to exercise its authority
and obligations, enforce the law and dispense justice, while there
continue to exist on Lebanese soil mini-states and security islands
for Hezbollah and the armed Palestinian organizations, decision
centers receiving their orders from abroad, and schools
disseminating the culture of Jihad, death, and hatred. Similarly,
the legitimate security forces of the Lebanese State cannot maintain
order and stability and effectively protect the borders with
fundamentalist militias and Jihadi armies in their back.

We demand the entire spectrum of Lebanese
leadership to clearly and unambiguously declare their positions
without equivocation and mercantile Byzantine arguments, without
liberationist-Jihadi hot-headedness, without Quixotic victories
against hypothetical enemies, without exploiting people’s base
instincts and fears, and more importantly, without greed for dirty
money. We demand the Lebanese leadership to put an end to Arabist
and fundamentalist fascist slogans from Middle Ages vintage that
time has transcended and which most Arabists themselves have
abandoned. Slogans which, for the past four decades, have prevented
Lebanon from moving from political and social anachronism into the
contemporary modern world. Amidst all this aimlessness and confusion,
the Lebanese people are asking: Are the country’s leaders genuinely
standing by a strong Lebanese State unconditionally and unreservedly,
or are they with the mini-states, the militias and specifically,
with Hezbollah’s weapons?

There
is no room for the duality of a strong Lebanese State with the
Hezbollah State on the same soil of Lebanon. There will be no
security, no justice, and no effective central authority on the
basis of diluted compromises and wheeling-dealing. Until then, all
offers on the table today are patching-ups, making-dos